Church of St Thomas of Canterbury, Kingswear

The Church of St Thomas of Canterbury stands in a slightly elevated position in the village of Kingswear, in Devon, overlooking the River Dart and the town of Dartmouth on the opposite bank. A Grade II listed building close to the railway station and the Dartmouth ferry, it has stood on this site since around 1170, and its dedication, its ancient tower and one of its tombs carry a remarkable connection to the murder of Thomas Becket.

A church has been here since about 1170, on land held by the de Vasci family since the Norman Conquest, and the earliest deeds, of about 1173, survive at Totnes Priory: William de Vasci and his wife Juliana gave half their land at Kingswear for the maintenance of the chaplain serving the chapel "founded in honour of the Blessed Thomas the Martyr". The dedication to St Thomas of Canterbury arose from the great wave of piety that followed Becket's murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 and his canonisation in 1173. In its early days the church was served by monks, first of Totnes Priory and then of Torre Abbey, to whom the de Vasci family gave the rest of their Kingswear lands.

The church holds a poignant relic of the Becket story. In 1280 a deed was witnessed by Brother Philip, believed to be Philip Fitzurse, a descendant of Reginald Fitzurse, one of the four knights who murdered St Thomas. An ancient stone coffin lid in the church is presumed to be part of his tomb, its worn inscription once promising thirty days' pardon to those who prayed for Philip's soul. Cast out into the churchyard during the Victorian rebuilding and left to weather among the weeds, the stone was at last brought back inside in the mid-twentieth century, and now lies by the Lady Chapel.

At the Reformation, the lands of the dissolved Torre Abbey passed to a layman, and Kingswear church became a chapel of ease for the parish of Brixham. The plague struck the village hard in 1604, when 145 people died, each marked with a "P" in the parish register. By the eighteenth century the church was described as ancient but ruinous, holding among its curiosities a "Pope's Bowl" of 1309. As Kingswear grew, the church was rebuilt in 1847 by the Exeter architect J. Hayward, who demolished all but the old tower and reconstructed the rest in local limestone, keeping the same Decorated style and design on a slightly reduced scale.

The church's greatest treasure is its tower, which survives from about 1173. In an age when settlements on the water's edge feared raids from Vikings, the French and the Irish, the tower may have served a defensive purpose. The de Vasci family held extensive lands in Northumberland, where church towers commonly doubled as refuges, with a winding stair, an upper chamber and a fireplace — and Kingswear's tower has just such a circular stone staircase and the remains of a flue, suggesting it too may have offered defence and shelter at the mouth of the Dart.

The church holds memorials to two soldiers of more recent wars. A stained-glass window of St Michael commemorates Commander Valentine Gibbs, who took part in the Zeebrugge Raid of the First World War and is buried in the churchyard, and a memorial honours Lieutenant-Colonel H. Jones, who was awarded the Victoria Cross and killed leading his men at Goose Green in the Falklands War of 1982. Among its other features are a font thought by some to be Norman, a carved pulpit of 1921 given by a former Bishop of Ripon, a ring of three bells, and an organ of 1916.

A Grade II listed building still serving its riverside village, the Church of St Thomas of Canterbury gathers more than eight centuries of Devon history into one church. From its foundation in the first fervour of devotion to the martyred Becket, through the tomb of a murderer's descendant and its defensive Norman tower, to its memorials of modern valour, it remains a fascinating and much-loved church at the gateway to the Dart.